Tapping The Billionaire (Billionaire Bad Boys 1)

Did I mention I was proud of her?

Was that fucked up? I didn’t mean for it to be. I was just happy to see her owning it—being proud of herself and her own choices instead of feeling like she had to answer for them. I wanted to yell out some kind of cry for all of the empowered females, but I thought that might seem suspicious.

So, I went with the only other thing I could think of.

“Okay. Cool.”

Eloquent, right?

“Okayyyy,” she repeated, adorably confused by my non-response. “Cool.”

I’m sure she’d been expecting the usual questions.

How’d you manage that?

or

Are you, like, super religious?

or

What the hell are you waiting for?

As her lover, I had a right to know she’d never taken a sexual encounter to that level before, a warning of sorts to make sure I didn’t make an assumption that affected both of us. But really, the rest of it was her business and hers alone. Sharing was a staple of every healthy relationship, but she got to be the creator of the terms and conditions under which said sharing happened.

“Kline?” she called, pulling out of my thoughts.

“Yeah, baby?”

“You don’t have any questions? Or…I don’t know. You’re so quiet.”

I was being quiet. Obviously, it was doing nothing but torturing her.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but it’s not what you think.”

“What do I think?” She raised a brow and I laughed.

“Okay, fair enough. I don’t know what you’re thinking. But I’m thinking you’re a fucking brilliant, beautiful woman with the most delicious pussy I’ve ever tasted. I’ll be lucky as fuck if you decide you wanna share more of it with me. But I don’t fucking expect it, and I’ve done nothing to earn it. I’m guessing none of the other fuckers in New York ever did, and I don’t mind one fucking bit.”

“That was a lot of ‘fucks,’ Mr. Brooks.”

I laughed and forced the tension in my shoulders to release. “I know. You got me all worked up. Thatch is usually the only one that can get me to utilize that many fucks in one thought process.”

Her laughter rolled through me like a wave.

“God, Thatch. I hear all sorts of lore about that guy, but the only actual interaction I’ve had with him was when you called me on the plane.”

“There’s Thatch lore?” I asked, mystified and horrified all at once.

“Oh yeahhh.” She laughed. “But most of it is from Dean, so I’ve taken any and all information with a very large grain of salt.”

I laughed.

“Like, rock salt.”

I shook my head, knowing Dean usually had a pretty good bead on the reality of things despite his juicy delivery.

“Ehhh. You can probably stick to the regular iodized kind. Thatch is a crazy asshole. Fun, though. And, occasionally, a good friend.”

“Is he really that crazy?” she asked, insistent in the belief that he couldn’t be as rowdy as people described.

As always with Thatch, examples of his depravity were plentiful, but one stood out above the rest.

“You know the scar on my abdomen?” I asked. “Lower right side?”

I glanced over in time to see her nod, eyes brimming with biblical knowledge. “It’s completely plausible I’ve noticed it.”

A smile arrested my features.

“Well, I owe its existence to Thatch and one of his half-baked ideas.”

Waiting for an explanation, she settled farther into her seat.

“One night during our freshman year of college, he got this idea that stair surfing on our mattresses on the icy courtyard steps could be the next big campus activity. Three broken fingers, one bloody nose, and a tree-branch-impaled abdominal muscle later, I decided I didn’t want to be a part of the sales pitch.”

“You could have said no from the beginning,” she suggested and I shrugged.

“What fun would that have been?”

I flipped on my blinker and turned into the long gravel drive of the Hamptons house. This had been the quickest drive of my life with Georgia keeping me company, and the salty sea air clung to my skin as I rolled my window down to put in the code for the gate. The stars were brighter now that we’d left the city behind, and when I turned to look at Georgie, I found her head hanging out of her window with her face to the sky like she’d noticed.

“Georgie?” I called, fighting back a grin.

“This place is outrageous!” she all but shouted. “Have you seen the fucking sky? And the length of this driveway?”

I shook my head and laughed some more, pulling forward cautiously so she could stay in her happy place half in, half out of the car.